talking about computers and design
by Ralph Grabowski

May 03, 2012

EU court legalizes reverse engineering of software

The two combatants don't matter (SAS and World Programming), but the result does. It's now legal in Europe to reverse engineer software. You can copy functionality, just not the algorithms. The courts figures that this will stop the monopolization of ideas.

In the CAD world, the ruling protects software companies mimicking the actions of competitors, such as BricsCAD and ARES of AutoCAD.

The ruling goes further, because the court said that programming languages and data formats cannot be covered by copyright. This means that reverse engineers can use the same programming language and data formats as the program they are copying -- even when copying these from a free version of the competitor's software!

Furthermore, the court said that reverse engineers do not need the permission of software owners, and can ignore terms of the license agreements that might prohibit reverse engineering.

If a company wants to protect functionality, then it'll need take out patents, a much harder and expensive process than just throwing in a copyright claim.